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Facebook adds 5 divs, 9 spans and 30 CSS classes to every post in the timeline

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Re: Facebook adds 5 divs, 9 spans and 30 CSS classes to every post in the timeline

#131

Post by [deleted] »

eeeeeeeeeeeee wrote: post #17
jordan801 wrote: post #12

Anyone who has written a few scrappers knows how brutally ineffective this is. Yelp tried to pull the same thing and it took me about 3 minutes to rectify my "for fun" scraper. It's also really not that difficult to write a smart scraper that you say, "Look for these things in this post. However you find them, replicate it for the others". Which is ultimately what I made my Yelp scraper do. If there's a pattern, I wi…

Yep, seems like a total waste of time. The people scraping will spend the necessary time to get around this (and then distribute that knowledge to the masses) so it seems like a pointless arms race. Facebook employees could better use their time on developing actual features that bring value.

[deleted]

Re: Facebook adds 5 divs, 9 spans and 30 CSS classes to every post in the timeline

#132

Post by Retra »

asdkhadsj wrote: post #107
duxup wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sounds like a fun challenge. It's just ads. If we're talking about some ad for a coffee maker, whatever. Now their whole selling data to unscrupulous folks, taking money from parents via their kids, selling fake news that makes people hate other people (now that gets into the ad space...) .... That's where I'd want to nope out.

Thank you. I feel like ads have such a bad rap because of the state of the internet. Yet, what does everyone expect? Is it shocking that content providers want money for their product? And yes, I know, some sites and ads do terrible things. The actively hurt viewership. BUT, isn't that the same with everything ? Even my groceries are getting worse as companies seek ways to increase profits without pissing me off; the…

It's not shocking that content providers want money. It's shocking that pushing ads and selling data are the only ways they can conceive of doing it.

Re: Facebook adds 5 divs, 9 spans and 30 CSS classes to every post in the timeline

#134

Post by duxup »

taurath wrote: post #122
asdkhadsj wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you. I feel like ads have such a bad rap because of the state of the internet. Yet, what does everyone expect? Is it shocking that content providers want money for their product? And yes, I know, some sites and ads do terrible things. The actively hurt viewership. BUT, isn't that the same with everything ? Even my groceries are getting worse as companies seek ways to increase profits without pissing me off; the…

I choose to believe we could have a better world, where loading a local news site doesn’t look like a virus-ridden Windows 95 desktop, where just trying to talk with friends isn’t interrupted by.. (checks twitter) payday loan lobbyists. Where the smartest people of my generation are using every dark pattern in the world to take my attention away from what matters to me.

I think it is very possible, even with ads.

So ads are often a place where dark patterns happen and such.

But take Apple for instance. Apple seems to respect user privacy to a fairly far extent compared to say, Facebook, Google.

If apple wasn't around ... we would probably say something about "you can't have these fancy smartphones without someone stealing all your data". But clearly Apple can do it (for a lot of reasons)... so we know it is possible.

I feel the same way about ads, it might be different, but it can be done.

Re: Facebook adds 5 divs, 9 spans and 30 CSS classes to every post in the timeline

#135

Post by Mirioron »

taurath wrote: post #122
asdkhadsj wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you. I feel like ads have such a bad rap because of the state of the internet. Yet, what does everyone expect? Is it shocking that content providers want money for their product? And yes, I know, some sites and ads do terrible things. The actively hurt viewership. BUT, isn't that the same with everything ? Even my groceries are getting worse as companies seek ways to increase profits without pissing me off; the…

I choose to believe we could have a better world, where loading a local news site doesn’t look like a virus-ridden Windows 95 desktop, where just trying to talk with friends isn’t interrupted by.. (checks twitter) payday loan lobbyists. Where the smartest people of my generation are using every dark pattern in the world to take my attention away from what matters to me.

Then pay money for those services.

Re: Facebook adds 5 divs, 9 spans and 30 CSS classes to every post in the timeline

#136

Post by megous »

tvanantwerp wrote: post #84
minimaxir wrote: post #50

This example is likely not specifically targeting ad blockers, but ad scrapers for transparency: https://www.propublica.org/article/facebook-blocks-ad-transp... > Our tool recognized ads by searching for that word. Last year, Facebook added invisible letters to the HTML code of the site. So, to a computer, the word registered as “SpSonSsoSredS.” That article also links to this tweet in that paragraph.

> We have collected more than 100,000 political ads in this way. But Facebook’s latest update blocks tools like ours from clicking on the “Why Am I Seeing This” menu. > The company added code that prevents clicks generated by computers — including browser extensions — on just that one button. Web browsers make a distinction between a click generated by the computer and one generated by your mouse. Clicks from your mo…

You can patch the browser to make isTrusted configurable, or to set it unconditionally true.

Re: Facebook adds 5 divs, 9 spans and 30 CSS classes to every post in the timeline

#137

Post by manigandham »

locklock wrote: post #11

I'm really thankful I haven't yet had a job where all I'm developing is new ways to force people to see ads. Imagine working on a 'feature' like this for weeks or months, and the end result is simply that people who don't want to see ads now have to see ads.

There's another homepage thread about Spotify doing the same thing and that's received positively. When you deliver value to billions of people who don't want to pay, ads are part of the package. And those ads have helped thousands of companies grow and provide all those other fun jobs.

The amount of hate advertising gets is just silly. It'd be great if we could push personal responsibility with even 1/10th of the effort.

Re: Facebook adds 5 divs, 9 spans and 30 CSS classes to every post in the timeline

#138

Post by nbush »

locklock wrote: post #11

I'm really thankful I haven't yet had a job where all I'm developing is new ways to force people to see ads. Imagine working on a 'feature' like this for weeks or months, and the end result is simply that people who don't want to see ads now have to see ads.

I remember doing this as a CSS copy-protection joke back in 2013. [1] Seems like a similarly petty thing for a company like FB to try and like many have said an extremely low-level arms race.

[1] https://github.com/nbush/headache

Re: Facebook adds 5 divs, 9 spans and 30 CSS classes to every post in the timeline

#139

Post by mmmmmmmmm »

hobs wrote: post #106
duxup wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sounds like a fun challenge. It's just ads. If we're talking about some ad for a coffee maker, whatever. Now their whole selling data to unscrupulous folks, taking money from parents via their kids, selling fake news that makes people hate other people (now that gets into the ad space...) .... That's where I'd want to nope out.

Do you think creating something that goes counter to your users desire is not unscrupulous? The only difference between the first stage of the pipeline and the rest is a matter of degree.

Wendy's charging me $1.89 for a junior bacon cheeseburger goes against my desire; I'd rather get it for free. That doesn't mean it's unscrupulous for them to charge me $1.89 for a cheeseburger.

Re: Facebook adds 5 divs, 9 spans and 30 CSS classes to every post in the timeline

#140

Post by hamandcheese »

dsr_ wrote: post #34
badgers wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That reminds me of a quote about dentistry: "You're in a career where nobody wants to see you and you're the last place they want to come back to and it's depressing." ( https://tonic.vice.com/en_us/article/5344jz/are-dentists-rea... )

A dentist's parents are usually proud of them. "What are you doing at work these days, kid?" "I'm inventing new ways to make people see advertising." "Have you considered doing something positive with your life?"

“I’m working a super cushy job making twice as much as I could most other places, mom!”

“Proud of you!”

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